


In Mercy's Shadow Nothing Grows

by Snow



Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Arranged Marriage, Child Abuse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-09 11:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snow/pseuds/Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An examination of Janine and Alec's childhood through two times they might have run away, the first: if Alec were older than Janine, the second: if he were younger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Mercy's Shadow Nothing Grows

**It goes like this...**

Alec is seventeen, his head full of equations and ideas of what is right and what is wrong. He watches his little sister clutch her book closer to her where she's curled up. "Is it really still that good? Don't you have it memorized by now?" He can read his math books seven or eight times, but that's different, there's always more meaning there. He always misses so much the first time through.

She looks at him, green eyes younger and much more pissed off than his. "Do you think I would still be reading it if it weren't, Davey? God, you're ridiculous!"

"Don't blaspheme!" comes the call from their mother from the other room, and there's a moment of sibling solidarity in the glance Alec and Janine share. They'd both thought she was still out, and for a second they're both terrified that she'll call them over to chastize them more thoroughly.

Alec has finally unclenched his hand from his book when Janine nods at him. "Do you want to visit the stables?" he asks, after she's already stood.

"I think that would be nice," she responds, and they go.

Out in the stables, Alec reaches a hand filled with oats out to Belle. He can feel her warm breath against the palm of his hand.

Janine ignores them both to sit down on the stool and bend the spine of her book back again.

"Fine, I'll bite," Alec says after a moment. He doesn't like being ignored, and he likes even less Janine pretending that she knows better than him. She's fifteen, and even worse, she _acts_ it. "What about that book are you enjoying this time around?"

"You wouldn't understand," Janine says, and Alec turns his most withering glare on her. She doesn't even glance up.

"And what, _exactly_ , wouldn't I understand?" Alec asks.

"What it feels like to be trapped!" Janine looks up at him, suddenly all fury, startling his own out of him.

"What do you--" he starts, but she doesn't let him finish.

"Tomorrow I'm going to have my _wedding dress_ measured, and the day after that I'm going to pick out decorations with mother. We're planning out the rest of my life, and you're still worried about whether or not mother is going to take away your _books_ when I don't even have a choice!"

Alec opens his mouth to protest that without his books he'll stagnate and fall apart, that they're the only things that really help, but he bites that back and says something else instead. "You do have a choice."

She snorts at him, pulling her hair back from her face with her left hand. "Yes, why don't you be the one who tells mother I'm not doing it instead?"

Alec suppresses a wince and rubs Belle's forehead instead. "We both know that wouldn't work. But we wouldn't have to talk to her. We could just...go."

"Go _where_ exactly, Davey?"

"Anywhere," he answers honestly. "Leave the city. Belle and Gabriel can carry us."

"And _then_ what will we do?" Janine asks, rolling her eyes at him.

"Anything. What are we going to do _now_?"

Janine rolls her eyes again, but she doesn't answer. Instead she opens her book again.

"Well?" Alec prompts.

"Do you really think we could?" she asks, her finger on her page to mark her place.

"I do," he says.

When he waits, weeks later, after weeks of planning, she opts to go to her wedding instead. He doesn't ever get the chance to ask her why.

  


* * *

**...Or like this**

Alec is thirteen, and well past being read to by his older sister. He has his own books -- about mathematics and physics and geometry -- and Janine's still stuck in the same fairy tales she's always been tempted by. She's sitting on her bed, and he's in her chair, and the turning of the pages is the only noise in the room for many long moments. Neither of them wants to be the one to remind their mother that they're in the house.

"Davey, do you ever wonder..." Janine starts, in a hushed tone, and Alec closes the book to look at her. For all that he rolls his eyes half the time that she talks, he still stops to listen every single time, because sometimes, even when she's just talking about fairy tales, she makes things sound like they matter.

"Well?" he prompts when a full half a minute has passed and she still hasn't continued.

She lifts a finger to press over her mouth, and pats the bed for him to come sit next to her. He sets his book down, careful not to let it clunk on her desk, as he moves over. 

She runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it up. Alec's ready to grab her wrist to make her stop when she does so of her own accord, leaning in to whisper into his ear instead. "Don't you just hate it here?" she asks.

He nods, because the answer to that is obvious. He's well aware of the fact that his books are wholly inadequate, that the equations they're giving are not even half of what's out there and that he has to sneak in his requests for more to his tutors amongst books about religion, of the sort his mother fully approves of. The last time he'd tried asking for a physics book and just that, he'd been locked in the cellar without a candle and told to simply pray. He'd run out of prayers after the second hour, and they hadn't helped anyway.

"Me too," Janine says, "And yet..."

He turns to look at her, because eye contact seems suddenly more important than whatever it is that she's going to say. Her eyes are honest, filled with an emotion Alec can't quite understand but is sure isn't good, but she forces her lips into a smirk and then she ducks her head. He dutifully turns his head back to the side to allow her to continue to talk to him.

"I'm scared," she admits. "Getting married might well be worse. I don't even know him and... Once I'm married that's it, isn't it, Davey?"

He doesn't know what to say to that, but he supposes that yes, it is true enough. The same thing could have been said for her getting engaged, but once she's married she'll move out, and short visits in the future won't be enough. At least she'll be out of their mother's reach, but he knows that can't be any comfort when her husband could be even worse.

"We could leave," she says slowly. "That's what people do in the stories, when they don't like the destinies that have been picked for them. They either find a champion to take on their cause or they just leave."

"Leave?" Alec lifts an eyebrow at her, remembering to whisper. "How would we get there? Where could we go? What would we do when we get there?" There aren't exactly a lot of options for a thirteen-year-old boy who doesn't have practical experience in anything and a fifteen-year-old girl.

"We could take the horses," Janine says matter-of-factly, and he waits for her to address the rest of his concerns so thoroughly. She just shrugs. "We'll leave the night before the wedding. I'll take care of everything, you just show up," she promises.

When he does, she never comes.


End file.
